All died in
direct consequence of dysentery, which even a milk diet could not
prevent. Perhaps the best way to send home so delicate an animal
would be to keep it for a time in its native forest; to accustom
it to boiled plantains, rice, and messes of grain; and to ship it
during the fine season, having previously fitted up a cabin near
the engine-room, where the mercury should never fall below 70
deg.(Fahr.). In order to escape nostalgia and melancholy, which are
sure to be fatal, the emigrant should be valeted by a faithful
and attached native.
The habitat of the gorilla has been unduly limited to the left
banks of the Gaboon and Fernao Vaz rivers, and to the lands lying
between north latitude 2deg., and south latitude 2deg.,--in fact, to
the immediate vicinity of the equator. The late Count Lavradio
informed me that he had heard of it on the banks of the lower
Congo River (south latitude 9deg.), and the "Soko," which Dr.
Livingstone identifies with the Gorilla, extends to the Lualaba
or Upper Congo, in the regions immediately west of the Tanganyika
Lake. His friends have suggested that the "Soko" might have been
a chimpanzee, but the old traveller was, methinks, far above
making the mistake.
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